Forget It Jake; It’s Chinatown

By Robert Buckley

Smut, like milk, does a body good. I, of course, have no scientific foundation for that belief – let’s just say it’s intuitive – but I really think reading and writing it clears your arteries, wards off senility, and generally keeps you sharp and mentally adjusted. Erotica is good for you!

Imagine then, when I came across a call for submissions at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association site from a lady who goes by the name of Alessia, my delight when she said erotica could do good for plenty of other folks too. I was onboard with that in a heartbeat and submitted my first story to Erotic Anthology which helped contribute to breast cancer research. I’ve since contributed stories to a handful of themed Coming Together anthos all dedicated to a good cause. And I have to say, it just fortifies the good feeling that you’re doing something worthwhile while also doing something you love.

I was honored when Alessia invited me contribute a collection of stories for a single-author anthology as part of Erotic Anthology’s Presents series. Talk about being in fine company.

I was also invited to choose the charity my volume would support. That didn’t take but a split second. Multiple sclerosis came out of nowhere to affect my family nearly ten years ago. My older daughter is afflicted with MS, but she is among the very fortunate who deal with this condition. She’s had only two serious episodes and keeps it at bay with medication. Last year she became a mom and blessed me with a grandchild. Believe me; I studied numerous Grampa Simpson episodes so I’d know hang of it. Still, I remember the day she was diagnosed and my utter bewilderment: “We don’t have anything like that in our family!”

Everything I know about MS I learned that day with the help of Google. It’s not hereditary, and it does indeed come out of nowhere.

I’m glad I found a unique way to – eventually – kick its ass.

I wanted to do something a bit different for my Presents volume and so chose just under a dozen tales with a noir flavor, most set in contemporary times, others set in historical periods, and one with a definite paranormal plot. I’ve loved noir since I started reading and watching movies. I came on board about the same time as noir took hold in a big way through the drab Fifties. And while I loved the classics, such as “The Maltese Falcon,” “Farewell My Lovely,” “The Big Sleep.” I also treasured the b-grade films and pulp fictions.

In most of the erotic stories I write, the characters are ordinary people, working ordinary jobs, living mundane lives, who experience extraordinary happenings. With noir, specifically b-noir, you just have these ordinary characters fall into the snare of nefarious others who manipulate them into dubious undertakings.

The following excerpts are from “Squandered Sins.” The title refers to an old Greek proverb that says, “The sins you regret the most are the ones you don’t commit.” The story is told in the first-person by Tom Gage, who holds the unglamorous job of public health inspector. In this story I also have fun toying with racial stereotypes, specifically that of the pliant, docile Asian woman. Represented in porn they are always childlike, speak babyish broken English, and are generally used as fuck-toy victims. In porn Asian girls always whimper and cry while they are being screwed and abused. It’s so cliché, but clichés are fun to play with too.

I also explore darker yearnings that often trouble decent people who are afraid to express them.

Tom is a decent guy with some dark urges that land somewhere around the rape-fantasy category. In this excerpt he has just informed a Chinatown underworld figure that his new restaurant will not be able to open because of sanitary violations

****

I walked over to the wall and traced the trail the rat had followed. “You could have spent a few more bucks and had a decent ratter come in who could plug these holes.”

“This is Chinatown, Mr. Gage,” Chiang said. I understood what he meant. The whole neighborhood was built on 200-year-old fill. The tired old brick tenements settled a little more with each year. You could patch them up but there’d always be ways for the generations of rats and cockroaches to intrude.

People who lived in the neighborhood didn’t have the fetish for cleanliness that westerners have. They were comfortable with the congestion; they’d come from places just as congested. Everyone in the neighborhood tested positive for TB. It didn’t mean they had it; it just meant they lived cheek-by-jowl with plenty of others who did have it.

Chinatown had its own standards, both Chiang and I understood that, but there were some things I couldn’t ignore. He understood that too.

I stepped back from the wall and bumped into someone. “Excuse me,” I said, thinking it was Chiang. But I turned to face a thin, trembling girl.

She appeared like a ghost and I looked about for Chiang and his man. I caught sight of Chiang with his thin, sour smile before he retreated up the stairs.

I looked at the girl, who was dressed in some cheap, gauzy dress. Even in the dim light I could see through it. Her eyes were cast down and away from me. She might as well have been sitting bare-assed on a block of ice from the way she shivered.

“What the …?” I started to say.

“Mr. Chiang say you okay love me now.”

“What?” I stepped toward her but she recoiled.

“You love me okay — I do what you want.” There was a plea in her voice. She spoke in quick gasps and near-sobs. Her trembling increased. She could have been leaning on a jackhammer.

“Where’s Chiang?”

“No, no. Please, okay love me now. No tell Mr. Chiang. I love you good.” Tears were trickling from the corners of her eyes.

I was disappointed in Chiang, but then this was just like him. He would offer me this girl, because it was easier than parting with money. I had no idea where she’d come from or what her relationship was with Chiang.

Then another thought intruded — out of nowhere. I could take her, this scrawny, helpless girl — right there, no consequences. I squeezed it right out of my mind and replaced it with a bright red point of anger.

I yanked the cell phone from my belt and pressed the memory button. The cop answered on the second ring.

“This is Tom Gage, city health inspection services, let me talk to Lt. Mahoney.”

“Yeah, well, he’s kinda busy. What’s your problem?”

“I’ve just been offered a bribe.”

“Oh, yeah, how much?”

“A girl.”

“No shit. So what’re you complaining about?”

“What’s your name, Dickhead?”

“Hey!”

“Get Mahoney on the fucking phone, or you’ll walk a winter beat along the docks. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I don’t have the juice to fuck you over.”

The young cop hesitated just a second then patched me through.

“Yeah, Dan Mahoney here.”

“Dan, Tom Gage — I’m calling from Chiang’s. He just tried to bribe me.”

“You’re shitting me — Chiang?”

“Yeah, I can’t believe it myself. Shit, I’m kind of insulted. But you won’t believe what he bribed me with — a girl.”

“Shit. We’re on our way.”

“Dan, bring an interpreter, a woman if there’s one available.”

“Got just the officer.”

The girl was sobbing openly now. “No, please. Mr. Chiang hurt, he beat.”

“No he won’t.”

Chiang appeared again at the bottom of the stairs. “I thought you were enjoying my gift. She cries like a little girl when you use her.”

“Jesus, Chiang. How fucking stupid is this? I thought you knew me better.”

“You don’t like, we have others.”

“Chiang, Dan Mahoney will be here in five minutes. Better get in touch with your lawyer. Why the hell did you do this?”

Chiang’s face darkened again. “Perhaps I misjudged …”

“Damn right you did …”

“Not your vice, just your resolve.”

***

Tom meets a Chinese-American police officer named Wendy Chu under contentious circumstances at first. She thinks he’s blundered into her case that she has been building against Chiang for a year. After the case goes south she offers to bury the hatchet and invites Tom for drinks in an out-of-the-way bar. After a few shots she offers him a confession, that she craves sexual humiliation, but also humiliation that is ethno-specific. She wants to experience the Asian sex stereotype and she wants to be the victim:

***

Wendy sipped her second drink until she finished it. Her expression had become darker.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t get mad, okay? But, when you were alone with that girl in the cellar, what was going through your mind?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Just — please, could you answer me? Did you want to fuck her?”

Okay, she said she got stupid when she drank. But the expression in her eyes was so sincere, and pleading.

“No. I mean — for a split second, I understood that she was — I don’t know — at my mercy.”

“Did it turn you on?”

“No, I was kind of disgusted with myself. Wait — I take that back — it did turn me on, and that’s what disgusted me.”

“Can I tell you something? It’s — something I’ve never told anyone.”

“Wendy, you’ve had a couple of drinks — maybe you shouldn’t …”

“I want to — I have to tell someone.”

“Okay.”

“When I was new on the force, I was assigned to a vice sting. Just about any female officer with legs got requisitioned for vice. Anyway, they set up a phony escort service, and I posed as one of the outcall girls. They sent me to the guys who specifically asked for an Asian girl.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, it was the same thing each time. They’d tell me they’d want me to act submissive, compliant. Nearly every one said they wanted to feel like they were raping a virgin. One even wanted me to put on a little sailor dress, like a school girl.”

“I guess everyone has their kink.”

She looked into my eyes with those deep dark pools of her own. “Yeah, you think so?”

She continued, “As soon as money changed hands the other cops would come in and arrest the guy. The sting ran about a week. But, after it was over, I — I …”

“Yes?”

“I placed a personal ad, an Asian Fantasy I called myself. I got calls the day it appeared.”

“Jesus, Wendy.”

“I thought I’d bring my shield and my gun. If it got rough, I could always say I was a cop to scare them off.”

“What happened?”

“I saw one guy — just one. Same scenario as the others. He — he made me do things.”

I didn’t say anything. Neither did she for a long time.

She finished her third scotch. “I only did it that one time. I still give myself eye-blurring orgasms thinking about what I did. Then I feel like throwing up.”

She looked at me as if she were hoping I could give her answers, but I wasn’t even sure what the question was exactly.

“That was almost five years ago. I think I’ve had three dates since then. I’m afraid — I mean — I’m afraid I might slip, and then they’d know — what I really wanted, what I really am.”

***

Tom is on his own since getting divorce papers from his wife. Wendy invites him to spend the night on her couch, which leads to:

***

Wendy wore a gauzy white chemise that was mostly transparent. She trembled, and held her arms across her breasts.

I stood and stepped over to her slowly. She didn’t look at me directly, but cast her eyes down and away.

I stopped a couple of paces away. She raised her eyes and stole a cautious glance at my face. I took one step back and looked her up and down.

This was no scrawny, underfed girl with her ribs poking out. Her legs were long, her thighs firm and defined. Their length was enhanced by the short chemise that barely covered her crotch. She wore nothing underneath. I could easily make out the slash of dark hair that pointed the way to her pussy. She was all round curves and firm pliant flesh.

I grasped her left forearm and pulled it away from her breasts. They weren’t overlarge, but nicely rounded, and her nipples were dark and rigid. I could feel the tremor that traveled through her body.

I made her back up into the bedroom right to the foot of the bed. I held her up as she began to totter backward onto it. “Take this off,” I said.

“But — but …”

“Forget it.” I grabbed the material between her breasts in my fists and slowly pulled it apart. The flimsy fabric separated with a soft hiss. I tore it open until it was nothing but a rag hanging from her shoulders. I put a finger to her breastbone and pushed her onto her back. I pounced on her, kissing her roughly along her shoulders. She squealed as I nipped her neck.

Then my hand fell to her pussy. It was slick and syrupy.

I slid my hands under her back and hefted her hips. I lifted her higher onto the bed, then let my hands roam freely over her body, squeezing her breasts, taking possession of her. I pushed her thighs apart and she snapped them together. I roughly separated them again.

“You want this?” I said. She looked away from me, but said nothing. Her entire body trembled now.

I rose on one knee and grabbed her legs above the knees. I flipped her over onto her stomach and snatched the hem of the ragged chemise, yanking it over her head and off her. I squeezed her ass once and then stood. “Don’t move.”

I yanked at my clothes and had them off in seconds, then stepped through the door on my way to the kitchenette. I took one glance over my shoulder. She made no attempt to change position.

I flung open the fridge and quickly retrieved what I was looking for. When I returned to the bedroom she strained to watch me slather the margarine over my cock.

“What — what are you doing?”

I might as well have asked myself the same question. I felt as though I was watching myself grease a dick that was just too stiff and thick to be mine. A porn star’s cock, and now it was glistening, oleaginous.

I never answered her. I just scooped another handful of soft margarine out of the plastic tub and smeared it between her ass cheeks. She gasped when my finger pushed into her.

“No — I never …”

“Good,” I said, and then pushed my thumb inside her past the knuckle. Her breaths came in rapid pants when I positioned the purple knob of my cock at her portal.

“Don’t hurt me,” she whimpered.

“Now, you gonna love me real good?”

She began to squirm, but pushed her ass against the tip of my cock. “No, don’t — don’t make me say that.”

“C’mon, you aren’t a tough cop anymore. You want to be one of Chiang’s girls, don’t you? C’mon, say it.”

“I — no, don’t make me …”

“Say it!”

“I — I love you okay. Very good.”

“That’s right, China-girl — China-slut.”

I pushed against her pucker until my knob popped into her. She responded with another high-pitched squeak.

“After I’m through taking your virgin ass, I’ll give you to Chiang.” I pushed myself a little deeper into her as she whimpered a weak protest.

“He’ll find someone who will treat you like the fuck toy you want to be.”

I pushed slowly but firmly, deeper into her bowels until my balls slapped against her pussy. I grabbed her left arm and pulled it beneath her. I didn’t have to guide her hands to her cunt lips. She began to finger her folds by herself.

I withdrew then pushed back inside her, slowly at first until I built up a rhythm and her rectum relaxed. She answered my assault with a long, gargling groan.

“Maybe Chiang will make you his number one cocksucker girl. Cause you so horny, aren’t you? Well?”

“No, please, don’t make me say …”

“You want to say it … say it!”

“Me — me so — horny.”

She began to cry, wailing so that my eardrums rattled.

“That’s right, cry for me. You little slut.”

As for me, I was in another place, as if I were watching myself in a porno film. I pumped faster into her ass, watching the ripples travel from her cheeks and up her back. Her tight channel gripped me like a brace of fists.

I wasn’t prepared for the thunderous shudder that rolled along her long-waisted torso, or for the ear-splitting shriek it inspired. Her body convulsed again, twice more in rapid succession.

Her bowels clenched around my cock, and I realized my cum was bubbling out of me. I withdrew slowly, painfully even, from her ass. A big dollop of my cum oozed out and the rest trickled out in a viscous stream to the folds of her pussy.

She was weeping softly and made no attempt to turn around. I lay my hand on her shoulder, half expecting her to flinch. She didn’t.

Gently I tugged at her arm until she rolled over onto her back. She swiped the backs of her wrists over her wet checks. Her chest was moist with beads of perspiration.

“Oh, Christ,” she said. Then, as if to scold herself, “I liked that. My God, what does that say?”

Her tears spilled freely again.

BIO: Bob Buckley was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a hospital that doesn't exist anymore, but was a conveniently short ride over the Prison Point Bridge from the Charlestown housing projects, in the shadow of the Bunker Hill Monument, where his family lived. He may even have passed Malcolm X, who was finishing up his time at the old state prison, when his parents took him home.

When he was four they moved to a brand new project in Boston's Columbia Point, the site of a former WWII prison camp for Italian prisoners, and hard by the city dump. It's now the site of the JFK Library and the University of Massachusetts. So wherever he went he came in touch with history, or history in the making.

Finally leaving the projects behind, he lived in a series of triple-decker houses in Boston's blue collar Irish-Polish neighborhoods where one identified oneself not by the neighborhood one lived in, but what parish. It was a boisterous place peopled by folks who were casually violent and racist, tribal, spiteful, gossip-ridden, intensely loyal and unconditionally loving. The parish church and the greater Apostolic Catholic Church held sway over all aspects of life, so it was a repressed place, but the stronger the repression, the more likely renegade ideas and—Oh, my heavens!—questions are spawned.

Saturday afternoons one was obligated to confess not only actual sinful deeds, but also thoughts. Can you imagine how many times a day a young boy might visualize a naked girl? Never mind that he might have no foundation at all for his imaginings of what a girl might look like without her clothes on. He still had to tell the priest.

Every so often, one of the neighborhood kids would swipe his older brother's or bachelor uncle's Playboy.

Wow! Did they really look like that? Then how come Mary Theresa O'Halloran or Anya Wisniewski looked so unfilled under their parochial school uniforms?

Bob had his suspicions that the girls in Playboy were not precisely representative of real girls, so while he enjoyed sneaking peeks at the pictures, he noticed the short stories and fiction that surrounded those pictures. And that began his fascination with words in general, but especially erotic words. And it's a fascination he's maintained long since escaping the old neighborhood and finding out for himself what girls look like when they're naked.

Today he still finds himself a stone's throw from history, living up the hill from the spot where they hanged the victims of the Salem Witch Hysteria. He enjoys using words to uncover the erotic in places you might never expect to find it—like everyday, mundane life. He especially enjoys writing about ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary erotic situations. So, far, it's been fun.